Twenty Five Years Ago Today

I was four when the Challenger exploded. I had always wanted to be an astronaut, and though I carried that dream for many more years, at that moment, I felt a great and tremendous loss. It was as though some part of the world’s wonder, magic, and mystique was gone in a flash. And in a way, it was. We all still mourn, but in my maturity, it is a new type of mourning I feel – the mourning that comes with the realization that the world is filled with tragedy, and there is despair, and people lose hope. It is a mourning that pushes into our subconsciousness and relentlessly forces its way into our emotions and brains, screaming, “All dreams die!” It is a mourning that makes me scared to take risks, and has me sitting at a desk for nine hours a day. It is in mourning that I realize twenty-five years have gone by, and I am still not an astronaut.